In Kurdistan, the reported number of cases of COVID-19 is remarkably low due to precautions taken in late February to block off access to the region for non-residents. This is especially notable considering the high number of cases in Iran, Kurdistan’s neighbor to the east, that did not handle concerns over the virus as seriously and now has at least 70,000… Read more →
Tag: Kurdistan
The Push for a Kurdistan
Slade Sinak Blog #4 – There have always been Kurds living in and around the intersection of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and for as long as almost anyone can remember they have been trying to gain sovereignty as a state. There are about “35 to 40 million Kurds” in this region,1 but their division into these three larger countries makes… Read more →
The Kurds: Stranded without a Nation
The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, with estimates somewhere between 36 million and 45 million people, but exist without a nation (IKP). The Kurds were not granted their own nation state in the post World War I division of the Ottoman Empire, leaving them separated across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran (BBC). Despite their geographic… Read more →
An Introduction to Tensions in Turkey
Slade Sinak Blog Post #1 – This semester I am going to be focusing on the topic of “Terror and Security” in the region of “Turkey, Syria (Kurdistan).” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the current president of Turkey, or the Cumhurbaşkanı (‘President of the People’). The party he associates with and founded is the AKP (Justice and Development Party), which has… Read more →